Into The Abyss: A Serious Discussion Of Iraq From Journalists Who Have Worked There

For its forty-fifth anniversary the Columbia Journalism Review published an oral history of the war in Iraq as seen through the eyes of some fifty journalists who covered it. The result is a unique and compelling narrative about the conflict itself and about the learning curve of the reporters and photographers who have covered what is clearly the most significant and difficult story of our time.

ScribeMedia.Org had the opportunity to film a discussion between five of these journalists at the Columbia School of Journalism and it can now be viewed online.

Participants included:

Deborah Amos: Foreign correspondent for NPR and ABC News. Author of Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World, a memoir of her experience covering the Gulf War 1991.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran: Washington Post assistant managing editor, former Baghdad bureau chef, and author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, about the occupation and the disconnect between the occupiers and the Iraqis.

Ali Fadhil: A physician and translator. He has collaborated with journalists from The Financial Times, Time, The Guardian, People, The Observer, The New Yorker and NPR. Fadhil is currently working on an Iraq film that will be aired on PBS Frontline next year.

Patrick Graham: Canadian freelance journalist who spent a year with the Iraqi resistance in Fallujah. His work has appeared in The London Observer, Harpers and other publications. Previously he was a foreign reporter for The National Post.

Chris Hondros: A prizewinning photojournalist whose work has appeared on the covers of magazines such as Newsweek and The Economist, and on the front pages of most major American newspapers.

As always, your comments are invited, especially if you watch the video first.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Wisdom

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.